


Ida Lewis, Daughter Of Peisinoe

by IShouldBeWriting



Category: 18th & 19th Century CE RPF, 19th Century CE RPF, American Folklore, Hellenistic Religion & Lore, Scottish Mythology
Genre: Author loves religion & lore crossovers, Badass Heras, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-20
Updated: 2015-05-20
Packaged: 2018-03-31 10:40:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3975067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IShouldBeWriting/pseuds/IShouldBeWriting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Liker her mother, her yearning for the sea was strong.  But in the end her love of her family was stronger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ida Lewis, Daughter Of Peisinoe

**Author's Note:**

> Ida Lewis, daughter of Hosea Lewis and sister of Hattie Lewis, was a real person. She was the keeper of the Lime Rock Lighthouse in Newport, Rhode Island from 1879-1911.

She stands on the shoreline, tangled dark hair whipped by the salty spray, the muslin of her white apron stained with the lichen and herbs she's been out to gather. Despite the bone chilling cold of the granite beneath her feet in late autumn, she is barefoot, the ragged nail of each toe more closely resembling claws than proper nails. In the distance, the heads of her sleek dark sisters bob amongst the waves, stiff whiskers shifting as their nares open and close. She draws a breath, lets out a despairing note of sound, calls to them of her homesickness.

Were it not for the weakness of her father's heart, she would go back to live among them - the daughters of Peisinoe.

But Hosea's heart had been through enough loss already, with yet more to come if the pricking of his invalid daughter's thumb was anything to go by. (By now, all who lived at Lime Rock Light knew better than to question the deformed girl’s prescience.)

For a few years, his wife had been able to disguise her true nature from him. He was frequently out at sea for months on end. And if, upon his return, he was told that the hoped for babe had not survived its birth, he would mourn, take solace in Peisinoe's arms, and when he could stand the quiet no longer, undertake yet another voyage. With his luck and acute skill at predicting the winds, his employers were always far too willing to offer him a commission. And if not, Peisinoe's gifts saw to that. 

He would return to her, revived by the sight of clear horizons and lands awash with color and exotic spices. He would rejoice upon the birth of yet another fine, healthy son in his absence. He would forget about the babes thought to be stillborn, his unknown daughters sent to foster in the dark ocean’s embrace.

Ida‘s gaze focuses out across the whitecaps again, just barely catching sight of the tiny stream of bubble where the last of her cousins had dove back beneath the waves. Her cousins would bring the latest news to her mother, of Ida’s desolation that the humans mistook for courage, of her twisted sister’s slow but inevitable deterioration.

That night, she dreams. The waters are cold and dark, but there is warmth trapped by the rich oils coating her sleek pelt. And there is comfort in the clustered shadows of her sisters, aunts, cousins, as they glide silently beside her in the hunt for fish. 

Suddenly she is shivering, the water too cold. Her lungs spasm, forcing a gasp from her throat and water fills her mouth. Her throat convulses as she chokes. She looks down to find the dappled beauty of her fur replaced by her human half’s too vulnerable flesh. 

A body rises from the depths, whiskers prodding sharply as a strong snout pushes her upward toward the surface. 

The next gasp she takes, her lungs are filled once again with the blessed sting of air. For a moment it is all she can do to float limply on her back choking and sputtering. She blinks salty water from her eyes, a mixture of tears and the sea. (Though for a daughter of Peisinoe, they are as one; tears and the sea.) As she rights herself, treading with slow lazy strokes that expend just enough energy to keep her afloat, she squints through the harsh brightness of unrelenting sunlight at the sleek head that bobs beside her. Her limbs freeze, as Ida is startled. The lovely grey and brown of the dappled coat is her own though the eyes that stare back at her belong to someone else.

Those eyes. She _knows_ those eyes.

Nares flare and the smooth shine of flank dazzles as her pelt, worn close and comfortable as all skins should be, disappears back beneath the waves. There is a final flick of flippers. One is twisted, longer, slimmer, a cruel mockery of both the human and selkie’s form.

Ida’s throat convulses and she bolts awake, her body drenched in the dampness and stench of all too human sweat.

Could her skin be gifted to be used by someone else as their own?

Could she do it?

Could she bear to give away the hope that someday, her duties discharged, she might return to dance among her mother’s people?

She looks across the tiny room at the hunched form of her sleeping sister. The one of her sisters who had stayed or, more accurately, could not leave. 

For Ida, staying had been a choice. The oldest of Hosea’s daughters, she had lived at the Lime Rock lighthouse for as long as she could remember. Though she knew that for a time her mother had lived aboard ship, sailed with her father in defiance of hundreds of years of seafaring tradition, Ida could not remember that time as anything more than the stiff whip of wind in her face, the constant sound of creaking ropes, and the tang of minerals in the air. When the trading company had finally prohibited Hosea taking his wife and daughter to sea they had settled here, the lighthouse a natural middle ground between their two homes. 

For a time, they’d been happy together. At night, Peisinoe and Ida would slip their skins, glide through the cold coastal waters. It’d been on just such a night that Ida saved the first of many fishermen from drowning. In time, the lighthouse’s haven was no longer enough. For Peisinoe, the short swims no longer filled the aching emptiness in her heart. For Hosea, the crash of waves against granite could not replace the susurrations of water beneath a sleek craft’s hull. 

Hosea began to take commissions again. Peisinoe’s swims turned from hours to days on end. Finally one day, they simply did not return. Hosea was on the far side of the world yet again and that night Peisinoe slid beneath the waves, keened a goodbye full of sharp regret, and glided away. 

Ida took care of her sister, took care of the light.

Eventually Hosea returned but his heart was broken by Peisinoe’s desertion. Then Ida cared for them all; her father, her sister, and the light.

She cared for them. In the end that’s what it all boiled down to. 

Could she bind to dry land for the love of their father?

Could she give the freedom of her skin, a body finally made whole, to her sister? 

Could the light ever be enough to fill emptiness as vast as the oceans?


End file.
